s it used. The antiquity of many other devices could be
noted, but I must desist, yet I cannot help remarking that even here we
have more exemplifications of history repeating itself.

Scenical representations and mechanical devices in Italy had long been
made a fine art, and an English traveller and critic observes that our
painting compared to theirs is only daubing. I find among their
decorations statues of marble, alabaster, palaces, colonnades,
galleries, and sketches of architecture; pieces of perspective that
deceive the judgment as well as the eye; prospects of a prodigious
extent in spaces not thirty feet deep. As for their machines I can't
think it in the power of human wit to carry their inventions further. In
1697, I saw at Venice an elephant discovered on the stage, when, in an
instant, an army was seen in its place; the soldiers, having by the
disposition of their shields, given so true a representation of it as if
it had been a real elephant.

In Rome, at the Theatre Capranio, in 1698, there was a ghost of a woman
surrounded by guards. This phantom, extending her arms and unfolding her
clothes, was, with one motion, transformed into a perfect palace, with
its front, its wings, body, and courtyard. The guards, striking their
halberds on the stage, were immediately turned into so many waterworks,
cascades, and trees, that formed a charming garden before the palace. At
the same theatre, in the opera "_Nerone Infante_," the interior of hell
was shown. Here part of the stage opened, and discovered a scene
underneath, representing several caves, full of infernal spirits, that
flew about, discharging fire and smoke, on another side the river of
Lethe and Charon's boat. Upon this landing a prodigious monster
appeared, whose mouth opening to the great horror of the spectators,
covered the front wings of the remaining part of the stage. Within his
jaws was discovered a throne of fire, and a multitude of monstrous
snakes, on which Pluto sat. After this the great monster, expanding his
wings, began to move very slowly towards the audience. Under his body
appeared a great multitude of devils, who formed themselves into a
ballet, and plunged, one after the other, into the opening of the floor.
The great monster was in an instant transformed into an innumerable
multitude of broad white butterflies, which flew all into the pit, and
so low that some often touched the hats of several of the spectators,
and at last they di